A year after the Monica Lewinsky scandal shook the presidency, Hillary Clinton told an interviewer that Bill Clinton's mother abused him and caused his sex addiction, an explosive new book claims.

The comments were made to Pulitzer-prize winning journalist Lucinda Franks in a 1999 interview - and Franks admits in her new memoir that she watered them down for publication.

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The Daily News obtained galleys of the memoir, due out next month, in which Franks — the wife of former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau — reveals that she published only part of the interview in the piece she wrote for Tina Brown's short-lived Talk magazine and focused on the conflict between the President's mother and grandmother rather than direct abuse.

Kelley, who was married to Bill's abusive alcoholic stepfather Roger Clinton during the future President's formative years, hurt her son "in ways you wouldn't believe," the then-First Lady continued, according to Franks.

"He was abused. When a mother does what she does, it affects you forever," Hillary said, according to the new book.

The July 24, 2014 front page of the New York Daily News.

She did not specify the nature of the abuse but said it was the source of her husband's infidelities. "I am not going into it, but I'll say that when this happens in children, it scars you," she said, according to Franks' account. "You keep looking in all the wrong places for the parent who abused you."

In the original 1999 Talk piece, Hillary Clinton's description of her husband's tough childhood spoke more hazily about an abusive atmosphere — focusing more on Kelley's problems with her mother Edith Cassidy, who cared for Bill when he was small.

"He was so young, barely 4, when he was scarred by abuse and he can't even take it out and look at it," Hillary was quoted as saying in Talk's debut issue.

"There was terrible conflict between his mother and grandmother. A psychologist once told me that for a boy, being in the middle of a conflict between two women is the worst possible situation. There is always a desire to please each one," she said.

Attempts to reach Franks were not immediately successful Wednesday, and the Clintons did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In the galleys of her new book, "Timeless: Love, Morgenthau and Me," Franks said Hillary never gave her the specifics of Kelley's alleged abuse.

Franks, 68, said she wanted to publish her entire interview with Hillary back in 1999, but the "national mania" over Bill's adultery was still scorching hot. Bill Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives in December 1998 in the aftermath of the Lewinsky scandal.

Franks writes in the book that she had doubts given the potential impact of the First Lady's comments.